Lifestyle
Make your Lifestyle Cleaner and Greener often means taking a different approach to Food, Clothing, Housing, Heating, all the practical changes that can reduce consumption, reduce waste and actually be better for you!
Alvechurch Incredible Edibles
Fresh Veg
Inspired by Incredible Edible Todmorden this local Alvechurch project has been growing in strength since its first initiatives creating planting boxes in Car Parks.
As a small volunteer group has grown so have the ambitions seeing the establishment of a raise bed site in the centre of Alvechurch Square, bringing the green to focus passers by to "Grow Your Own" or indeed just take a bit home with you!.
Alvechurch Gardens
Highlighting Gardens in the Village with ECO features
Raised Beds and Rainwater run off on Hinton Avenue
Using Raised Beds to grow your own is nothing new, however changing the whole of your front garden to do so does raise eyebrows. Most people have reduced the front garden to a car park with a small side plot for flowers or shrubs, low maintenance and definitely not particularly focused on Growing Your Own Veg.
Having a south facing front garden with two long strips of grass and a load of crazy paving meant "Challenge" to Dave and Ros Perryman. Why leave such a great space to waste, why not use it to grow stuff and park your cars!. There was also another key factor in making the decision apart from the lack of car parking space.
Rain Water run off from the drive basically ran down the crazy paving into the front of the house and around the side causing a large flood every time it rained!
Recycled Plastic Grid creates a porous surface for gravel
To avoid the rain water run off and replace the original crazy paving drive Dave and Ros decided to use recycled plastic grid. A click together grid used for ground re-enforcement for gravel, grass and other soft surfaces. Placing the grid onto Weed membrane and new hard core, meant the water could seep straight through the gravel and not run around the house, nor indeed run off into the already overworked drains.
One of the most overlooked issues of the present is water run off from Hard Surface drives into the drains. Although paved and hard surface drives look great; unless they have adequate drainage the water goes into the main Drainage and Sewerage system causing overload and flooding on many roads.
Covering the Grid with 10 or 20 mm gravel means the spaces in the grid fill up and the gravel doesn't move about and the result is a durable, supportive surface that's porous and can support Cars!
